On Tuesday, members of the newly formed App Drivers Union rallied victoriously outside the Massachusetts State House, celebrating the certification of the first statewide rideshare union, representing nearly 70,000 workers.
The organized group of Uber and Lyft drivers is a rare—though increasingly less so—example of new unions forming in the U.S. In 2025, just 16.5 million U.S. workers, or one-tenth of the workforce, belonged to a labor union. That’s the highest number of unionized workers in 16 years, an increase of 463,000 since 2024. Still, unionization is far from its peak in 1954, when one in three Americans belonged to a union.
